"A small, memorable awakening."
Out of the past and into the present.
27 JULY—I must have been fifteen. Or maybe fourteen. It was summer and I walked through the dry pine forest absorbed in thoughts and unaware—unaware of being unaware.
It was my habit then to pluck leaves from the undergrowth as I wandered paths and horse trails on my grandparent’s 200 acres in northern Idaho. Fascinated by the distinctive anatomy of a leaf’s midrib and veins—the supporting structure that transports water, glucose, and other substances to the cells—I’d taken to tearing away the delicate fleshy lamina, or broad green portion of a leaf, until only the fine webbing remained. Bored, I would toss aside the skeletal remains and reach for another to pick apart. My initial curiosity and fascination quickly passed into unthinking behavior.
That afternoon, reaching for a leaf—Was it oceanspray, syringa, or serviceberry? I cannot recall—I was taken entirely by surprise.
As my fingertips touched the leaf I felt what I could then, and can now only describe as sentience and intelligence—an awareness—however different from my own. For me it was as if awakening from a sleep. My eyes opened, or a veil was lifted, and I saw in a new way. I saw something I could never unsee. I saw—How else to put it?—life flowing in the branches and leaves of the plant before me. It was unmistakable and I understood something profound.
I recognized a kinship. It was, I think now, my first conscious experience of reverence. And a mindless habit was broken.
* * *
Mindless habits can be broken and that’s very good news, I remind myself. Because everywhere I look these days, I see the consequences of mindless unawareness. I see what appears to be, among other things, neglected kinship—a loss of reverence?
I write this from Seattle, a city I am visiting for the first time in over a decade, and where I am in something approaching a state of shock.